


(Don't) Stay out of my Hair

by msred



Series: Starting Over [20]
Category: Chris Evans (actor) - Fandom, Real Person Fiction
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Engagement, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 03:01:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20400586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msred/pseuds/msred
Summary: “Or,” I grinned and tucked my fingertips into his pockets and tugged, just enough for him to feel it and rock forward a little on the balls of his feet, “what if my fiance just really wants to learn how to French braid because he’s too cute for his own good?”





	(Don't) Stay out of my Hair

**Author's Note:**

> So, I had to abandon my whole "no first names" rule for this one. The narrator still never gets named (so please, by all means, throw yourself in there if you wish), but this one doesn't just have clues as to who he is, it has big flashing neon signs. Oh, and the tags, of course.
> 
> Also, this is absolutely nothing but pure, tooth-rotting fluff. My brain had a sweet little image but didn't want to do a *real* story.

_ 16 months together, 6 weeks engaged (Memorial Day, Year 3) _

It had been six weeks since Chris had proposed, and we were getting ready to go meet my friend Chelsea to go out on her family’s boat to celebrate Memorial Day. We also planned to invite them to the wedding in two and a half weeks. Of course, we weren’t going to tell them that’s what we were inviting them to; on the record we were going to invite them to a backyard barbecue to celebrate our birthdays. The backyard part was true - not mine, but the family of a former student who had a gorgeous backyard with a waterfront view and an adorable pier - and it  _ was  _ between our birthdays, but we would be celebrating a lot more than that. We were just trying to keep it quiet in the hopes that the only people - and cameras - to show up would be ones we actually wanted there. We hadn’t even made the engagement public outside our own personal circles, so we’d been able to avoid the wedding planning speculation. It helped that I was completely unknown and that the vast majority of our time together was spent in coastal Virginia, where his presence went mostly unnoticed. To be perfectly honest, aside from some Twitter speculation, it didn’t even seem to be public knowledge that he was in a relationship, and we liked it that way. My anxiety, and his, to some extent, over dealing with what might happen to our wedding if and when the press, and fans, found out that he was not only dating, but engaged, had been part of the reason we’d decided to get married so quickly. That, combined with the fact that neither of us had any desire for a big wedding and that we both just really wanted to  _ be married  _ (I hadn’t realized how much until he asked) had led to a pretty easy decision to plan something simple, intimate, and quick. 

I was in my house’s third bedroom, which I had always used as a sort of dressing room, since the master bedroom was so small and I’d never needed more than one guest room anyway, braiding my hair in front of the vanity when I saw him in the mirror. He was in the doorway, leaning on the doorjamb with his arms crossed over his chest, just kind of smiling at the back of my head. “Well hi there, Creeper,” I grinned at him through the mirror as I twisted a small elastic band around the end of the first of what would be two French braids. “Whatcha doin’ back there?”

“Just watching.” He pushed himself off the doorframe and came to stand right behind me. “It looks so … complex,” he ran a couple fingertips down the braid. “I’ve never actually seen anyone do it before.”

I spun on the vanity stool and looked up at him. “You’ve never seen anyone braid before?” He shook his head. “You have two sisters and a niece. Scarlett spent half of  _ Endgame  _ with a braid. Hell, so did Hemsworth, for that matter. How have you never seen anyone braid before?”

He rolled his eyes at me. “I mean, yeah, I’m sure I’ve seen my mom or one of my sisters do it on like, each other, or my niece, and I probably have been in hair and make-up when it was being done, but I’ve never seen anyone do their  _ own _ .” He leaned over me, examining the braid and running his fingers over it again. “Is it hard?”

“Chris?” I looked up at him, still looking down at my hair with a look of almost wonder, and I couldn’t help but smile. I loved how much joy he got out of little things, and how he was never ashamed of his wonder. “Do you want me to teach you to French braid?”

“I mean,” he straightened back up and looked down into my eyes, “what if both of our nieces are visiting at the same time and you start to do one and the other one wants hers done? Or what if you don’t feel well, or you overdo it at the gym and you’re too sore to lift your arms up and do your own? We both know you go too hard on your shoulders sometimes.” He tried to look serious on that last part, reaching down and actually squeezing my shoulders, but he was failing terribly.

“Or,” I grinned and tucked my fingertips into his pockets and tugged, just enough for him to feel it and rock forward a little on the balls of his feet, “what if my fiance just really wants to learn how to French braid because he’s too cute for his own good?” Although, to be honest, I knew there was some truth to the part about our nieces. He’d do anything for his, and though he’d only met mine once, I knew the same was true for her, if for no other reason than because I loved her so much.

He shrugged. “You can think whatever you want,” he narrowed his eyes at me.

I shook my head at him, grinning, as I stood from the stool. “Sit,” I told him. He just looked back at me, questioning. “Come on, time for your first lesson. Have a seat.” He continued to look at me skeptically but did what I said. When he was seated I sat on the floor in front of him and looked up at him from over my shoulder. “Do you know how to do just a basic braid?”

“Maybe?”

I let out an overexaggerated sigh and shook my head at him like I was disappointed and he gave me his most (fake) apologetic look. “Okay, watch.” I grabbed the still-unbraided pigtail on the left side of my head from where I’d parted the hair. “So you split it into three sections, as even as you can.” I divided the hair then looked up at him and he nodded. “Okay, then you pick one side, doesn’t matter which one, and cross it over the middle. So that’s the new middle.” I looked up at him again and he was watching so closely, with such concentration, that my heart stuttered. “And then, you bring the one from the other side over the middle. Then you just repeat the whole thing over again.” I went back to the first side and brought it over, then to the other, moving far more slowly than I normally would.

“Can I finish it?”

“Yeah, of course.” I held the three strands of the braid apart from one another the best I could so that he could grip them between his fingers. His fingers brushed mine as he took the hair from my hands. I sat, my head tilted to the side so he could reach more easily, as he finished the braid. When he got to the end he held it straight out from my head by the tips of his fingers. 

“How did I do?”

I took the braid from him and pulled it in front of me as much as I could to look at it. “Not bad,” I told him and nudged his leg with my elbow before I tilted my head back to look at him, loosening the braid with my fingers. “You’re a natural.” I winked and he scrunched his nose at me, one of the many silly faces I’d become very familiar with over the previous year and a half. “You ready to move on to level two?” I pulled the elastic from the braid I’d already finished and started to work my fingers through it from bottom to top. “I’ll do this side and you can watch, then you can do the other one. Sound good?”

“Bring it on.”

I couldn’t help but shake my head as I finished shaking out the braid. I sometimes wondered how much of his silliness was to make me laugh and how much was just  _ him _ . I didn’t matter, I loved it either way.

“So,” I started, lifting a triangle of hair right at the top of my head, along my hairline behind my bangs, “you’re going to start with that same basic braid,” I split the triangle into three sections and crossed one section over the center then did the same with the other, starting with the side away from the center part. “But, after the first round,” I pulled up a new small section of hair from my hairline at my temple and added it to the first section, “you’re going to pick up another strand of hair and add it to this one before you cross it over the center.” He put his hands on my shoulders and I felt him lean forward to watch more closely. I repeated the same action on the other side, pulling hair from along my part. “And then you do the same thing on the other side.” I pulled the strands tight and went back to the other side, moving slowly and deliberately. 

After I’d added one more section from each side, he asked, “So, does it matter how much you do each time?”

I shrugged and kept working. “It really depends on the person and what kind of look you’re going for. My hair is really thick, like, I have a lot of it, but it’s also really fine, like a baby’s, so it doesn’t hold very well unless I do pretty small sections.”

“Is that why it’s so soft?” He combed his fingers through the loose ponytail on the other side.

I laughed. “That’s part of the reason.” He lifted the ponytail and used it to tickle my cheek. I was still holding onto my hair with both hands, the first braid unfinished, so all I could do was squeal and lean away from him. “Stop,” I giggled, breathless, “stop! Do you want to learn or not?”

He dropped my hair. “Sorry.” I looked up at him and he practically pouted back down at me. 

“You’re ridiculous,” I told him, but I knew he could read the amusement on my face because his pout widened into a grin. “Anyway,” I tilted my head back down and slightly to the side so that he could see what I was doing, “You’re going to keep going like that until you run out of hair to pick up, then you just keep braiding to the end.” Neither of us spoke as I finished the first braid, but he did turn around and pull an elastic from the vanity top when I’d almost reached the bottom, reaching over my shoulder to hand it to me when I had run out of hair to braid. “So,” I started once I had the braid secured and had laid it over my shoulder, “you ready to do the other one?”

He clapped his hands together over my head and rubbed them briskly. “Let’s do this.” 

I pulled the hair tie from the unbraided ponytail and put it on my wrist and ran my fingers through my hair to smooth it. “Alright mister, let’s see what you’ve got.” I felt him section off the front triangle of hair and split it into sections, then comb his fingers through it all and start over again. He did that two more times before finally continuing with the braid. I couldn’t see what he was doing since I’d sat on the floor with my back to the vanity, but, as far as I could tell, it felt like he was doing okay. We sat in silence as he worked his way down the braid. I knew he was focusing, so I didn’t want to distract him. I really didn’t care how the braid came out, it would only take me a couple minutes to redo it if I needed to, but I also knew that he was as much of a perfectionist as I was, and that if he was going to to learn something, even something as inconsequential as how to French braid, he wanted to do it right.

“Okay,” he sighed, twisting an elastic around the bottom of the braid, “I’m done. I guess.”

“Why do you sound so pitiful?” I asked him as we both stood and I took back my seat on the stool. His face told me he was definitely not happy with his handiwork. I spun back to face the mirror and he stepped behind me as I turned my head first to one side to study the braid I’d done, then to the other side to study his.

“Yours is so smooth. And you can see all the lines where you pulled up the hair. Mine’s all … puffy.” I could see his furrowed brow in the mirror as he looked down at my hair, studying to try to figure out where he’d gone wrong. “Why is it like that?”

“It’s not bad, it’s just not tight enough. You have to pull harder.”   


He sounded almost defensive when he answered. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

I smirked and made eye contact with him through the mirror. “You’ve pulled my hair before.”

He didn’t say anything at first, raising one eyebrow and staring me down for a second. Both hands came to my braids right at the base of my scalp and he pulled hard enough to bring my head back until I looked straight up at him. He leaned over me and slid his right hand around my neck to the front of my throat then down the center of my chest. “Oh is  _ that  _ the rule we’re playing by this weekend?” His hand slid between my breasts, under the cotton sundress I wore over my swimsuit, and his lips brushed against mine. When I stretched to get more from the kiss, he closed his lips around mine then darted his tongue out to run over my bottom lip. His fingers dipped just under the edge of my swimsuit top at the same time that he pushed his tongue into my mouth. The sensations created by the new angle of the kiss and his fingertips ghosting over the sensitive skin along the top of my breast made me shiver and sit up a little straighter, all while pressing my thighs together. I reached up and cupped my hand around the back of his neck where he stood above me. Reluctantly, I squeezed his neck and pulled away from the kiss, humming as I did.

“We have people waiting for us,” I rasped. “But I’d  _ really  _ like to put a pin in that for later.” He winked at me and kissed me again before standing back up. I looked up at him for a second longer then brought my head back down to take in my reflection. I ran both hands over the two braids, mine neat and tidy, his much looser.

“Yeah,” he drew out the word and sighed a little. “How do I fix that without hurting you?”

“Oh sweetie,” I laughed. “When I was young, before I knew how to do it myself, my best friend used to do it for me for cheerleading and that girl would rip your scalp off for a tight braid. If I can survive her, trust me, you’re not going to hurt me.”

“I - I’m sorry,” he stared down at me, his jaw a little slack, and brought his fingertips up to his temples before lowering his hands back to his hips. “Did you say  _ cheerleading _ ?”

I rolled my eyes and huffed out a breath. “It was elementary school. Everybody did it because there was literally nothing else to do. I stopped in sixth grade.”

He took a step back and raised his hands, almost as if in surrender. “I-I’m marrying a  _ cheerleader _ ?”

“Ohmygod, Chris, stop.”

“I just - I don’t know if I know you  _ at all _ .” He stepped back again and brought both hands to the top of his head. 

I turned on the stool so I was facing him head-on instead of watching him through the vanity mirror. “Are you done yet?”

“A cheerleader?” he almost whispered.

I stood and crossed the room to stand right in front of him. “First of all, there’s nothing  _ wrong  _ with cheerleading.” He ducked his head so I wouldn’t see his grin. I don’t think he had an opinion on cheerleaders one way or the other; he was just trying to rile me up. “But, we both know that’s not me. I’m a band nerd. A theatre geek. A word whore. Just the way you love me.”

He lifted his head, his eyes wide in an attempt to look hurt. “What else aren’t you telling me?” I only shook my head and brushed past him out of the room. “Did you wear a little pleated skirt?” he called after me.

“Wouldn’t you like to know!” I called back over my shoulder as I moved to the kitchen to get my purse from the dining table. “I’m leaving, with or without you.” I slid my feet into my sandals and dug my car keys out of my purse. I heard his footsteps behind me just before his hands landed on my hips.

“Do you have a little pleated skirt  _ now _ ?”

I knew he couldn’t see my face, but I bit my bottom lip as I grinned. Actually … 

“I think we should probably put a pin in that too.” His fingers tightened on my hips just briefly, then I turned and pressed my car keys against his chest. “You’re driving.” He groaned a little. I turned to pick up my purse then smirked back over my shoulder at him as I headed for the front door. “I have to fix my hair.” 

**Author's Note:**

> All pieces in this collection will be an anthology of connected one-shots that exist within the same universe; and the officially no longer follow chronological order. They may eventually be reorganized into novel-format, but that would be quite a way down the road.


End file.
